Generation_D:Citrate1007: Lobbyists don't want it at all for obvious reasons and anti-gun folks are usually motivated by emotion. It does speak volumes that the NRA is against any research because they feel that it would always make guns bad, but I honestly think that it would deflect the attention away from the actual guns and place the violence on the environmental/personal correlations. A lot of places have as many guns as us but don't see the violence. That in itself should also speak volumes.

you sure bout that? The USA leads the world in gun ownership per capita, by a factor of at least 2 or 3 over most of the world you want to be comparing to (e.g., Western Europe, Japan, Australia/NZ, etc)

Still though a per capita comparison may be misleading. Most people who own guns own more than one (I have 3). It would be better to look at what % of the population owns guns because I would be willing to bet that we horde them like there is no tomorrow.

INTRODUCTION: Gun Facts is a free e-book that debunks common myths about gun control. It is intended as a reference guide for journalists, activists, politicians, and other people interested in restoring honesty to the debate about guns, crime, and the 2nd Amendment.

insano:Fubini: One goal is to establish how many total gun uses there are (regardless of whether they're fired or not) and then quantify those types of uses. You might not agree that this usage is "self defense," but it's clearly on a whole different level from a criminal brandishing a gun while robbing someone. Neither instance results in a shooting, but they're both uses, and we'd like to be able to understand how guns are actually being used.

Someone bringing a firearm to guard against an imaginary danger can not be considered 'self-defense' or even 'using' the gun. If that were the case, then research will produce hyperinflated numbers of gun uses in self defense. By this reasoning, every time a gun owner loads a gun, holds a gun, conceals it, or brings it with them anywhere, could be considered a 'use' as long as the intention of the person was to use the gun in the event of any dangerous circumstance, perceived or real. When a police officer brings a gun with him to work, is he 'using' the gun? How many times is he using the gun throughout the day as it stays holstered? Is each traffic stop a separate use of the gun? Each time he exits the vehicle? What about someone with a concealed carry permit?

It depends on exactly what you're trying to capture- that's the whole point. I would argue that there's a clear difference between what happened in TFA and actually finding someone in your house. But then, at least in my mind, there's also a clear difference between what happened in TFA and simply carrying a gun with you that day. In TFA the gun wasn't used in the sense of firing or brandishing, but it would be hard to argue that it didn't provide the wielder with some measure of material comfort or reassurance that he would be safe even in the event of trouble. It could also be argued that the gun can modify people's behaviors simply by it's presence: for example, the guy in TFA might have just called 911 instead of investigating himself.

My point is that if we want a truly accurate picture of gun use in this country we want the data and the tools to fully encapsulate all of these different situations and understand them, rather than just looking at how many people were sent to the hospital/morgue each year, which is what crime stats and mandatory reporting laws give us.

We want to understand how guns affect society, not just how many people they shoot.

hinten:way south: hinten: I do believe that there are some rational heads that really do want to get closer to the truth.

The question is what will people do with the truth when they know, assuming its the actual truth and not just another study rigged to support a specific point of view. Because we've had more of the latter than anything else in recent years.If an unbiased study doesn't support the political desires of the ruling party, will they heed its suggestions or sweep those results under a rug?

/and I mean this for both pro-gun and anti-gun perspectives./Because I don't see people turning in their guns any sooner than a failing politician accepting blame for his policies causing poverty and crime.

Well, doing research on smoking has, ultimately, had an effect on consumption. It has taken a long time and there were certainly plenty of studies that came to different conclusions, some sponsored by cigarette manufacturers, but there was a clear impact on society. And even after the research it takes millions of dollars to change society even after the facts are known. Some might argue there is a whole other parasitic cottage industry popping up enjoying those millions of dollars but either way the money gets moved, society is changing.

I am in no way comparing the issue of guns with the issue of cigarettes. For starters, one product is a consumption based product which has different intrinsic values and market behaviors from guns. That's why bringing up prohibition in a gun thread is a red herring as well. But the example does show that research leads to insight leads to action leads to impact on societal behavior and attitudes.

I agree that studies, valid or not, will have an effect.It's because they do that many poorly constructed (or outright fraudulent) studies appear in mainstream conversations.

I'm wondering if people will accept the repercussions of a truly unbiased study when they aren't already sure of the outcome.

More guns means more shootings. As someone mentioned the bear trap example, more traps also means fewer bears. Do we accept the reality or more bear trappings, and more kids accidentally stepping in traps, if it lowers the risk of being mauled by bears?

...or do we gloss over the reason why people keep buying traps because we dislike trapping so much that we prefer the image of a one sided argument?What if the bears are the ones petitioning for the trap ban?

I mean, this origin of these kinds if studies is often far from unbiased. The cynic in me isn't ready to believe that will change because its been ordered through political channels.If it was possible to get a fair study, and if the results showed everyone to be wrong in their preconceptions, I'm willing to wager they bury the results faster than a dead hooker in a congressmans car trunk.

My biggest problem with guns, is that I can go out and buy one. I have never even touched a gun.I don't think we need bans. I do think licensing would be good. In the same vein as driving a car. Have to prove you can handle a car. You should have to prove you can handle a gun. Maybe that would cut down the numbers of kids getting ahold of them.

You don't need science. The guy with the gun is always right. For instance, this gentleman thinks that you are about to donate your wallet to his favorite charity, Shaky's Meth Emporium. He'll be happy to make the donation for you.

The really telling thing is that the gun lobby have driven what should have been simple and standardized reporting metrics into such disarray that nothing useful can be drawn from them.

The car lobby hasn't pushed automotive reporting metrics into a clusterfark. I wonder what the gun lobby is scared of from basic metrics such that they've engineered this? What are their numbers telling them that they don't want going public?

Correlation hints at causation, and actively disrupting statistics hints that the real stats are pretty ugly.

mrshowrules:The idea that more guns would cause more shootings is just logical. More bear traps would cause more bear trap accidents. This is the default position/assumption. In my mind, it is up to the gun nuts to show that it makes society safer, which obviously they can't do.

Now imagine that you are a researcher. You've already got a built-in bias before you even start designing your study. How do you think that might effect the outcome?

imontheinternet:[www.realnewsreporter.com image 300x255]You don't need science. The guy with the gun is always right. For instance, this gentleman thinks that you are about to donate your wallet to his favorite charity, Shaky's Meth Emporium. He'll be happy to make the donation for you.

His trigger finger is in the proper safe position, off the trigger and on the side of the frame. He's not a real criminal, hence, no donation.

dittybopper:mrshowrules: The idea that more guns would cause more shootings is just logical. More bear traps would cause more bear trap accidents. This is the default position/assumption. In my mind, it is up to the gun nuts to show that it makes society safer, which obviously they can't do.

Now imagine that you are a researcher. You've already got a built-in bias before you even start designing your study. How do you think that might effect the outcome?

Let me also point out, before someone else does, that I also have my biases, just on the opposite side, and that colors how I look at firearms.

Citrate1007:Generation_D: Citrate1007: Lobbyists don't want it at all for obvious reasons and anti-gun folks are usually motivated by emotion. It does speak volumes that the NRA is against any research because they feel that it would always make guns bad, but I honestly think that it would deflect the attention away from the actual guns and place the violence on the environmental/personal correlations. A lot of places have as many guns as us but don't see the violence. That in itself should also speak volumes.

you sure bout that? The USA leads the world in gun ownership per capita, by a factor of at least 2 or 3 over most of the world you want to be comparing to (e.g., Western Europe, Japan, Australia/NZ, etc)

Still though a per capita comparison may be misleading. Most people who own guns own more than one (I have 3). It would be better to look at what % of the population owns guns because I would be willing to bet that we horde them like there is no tomorrow.

About 30% of individuals, about 50% of households own a gun in America.

Dusk-You-n-Me:badhatharry: It would be good to know how many were shot by police, suicides, or accidents from negligence.

Go nuts. Link

CDC Mortality data provides a much better picture of the relative magnitude of homicides vs suicides: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/deaths.htm. Suicides are about 60% of gun deaths, accidental deaths are a small fraction (less than 1%).

I'm having trouble finding injury data- and the numbers for injuries are very different than mortality. If I recall correctly, there are about 15 times as many accidental gun injuries as there are accidental deaths. There are also deliberate gun injuries from assault, but that number is less than 15 times the number of homicides, though I don't remember the exact value.

Fubini:I'm having trouble finding injury data- and the numbers for injuries are very different than mortality. If I recall correctly, there are about 15 times as many accidental gun injuries as there are accidental deaths. There are also deliberate gun injuries from assault, but that number is less than 15 times the number of homicides, though I don't remember the exact value.

Found it- all you would ever care to know about nonfatal firearm injuries. This is about 12 years old- it'd be nice to have more recent data.

imontheinternet:[www.realnewsreporter.com image 300x255]You don't need science. The guy with the gun is always right. For instance, this gentleman thinks that you are about to donate your wallet to his favorite charity, Shaky's Meth Emporium. He'll be happy to make the donation for you.

Fubini:About 30% of individuals, about 50% of households own a gun in America.

The numbers are hard to pin down accurately, though: There is a downward bias to reporting it.

All of those numbers are based upon surveys of the general population, and there are two types of people who are unlikely to report their gun ownership to a stranger with a clipboard or one on the phone: Hard-core gun rights activists, who might be wary that it's some sort of government trick or who believe it's NOYFB*, and criminals, who have a realistic fear that admitting to gun ownership would result in being arrested.

Both of those cases (and there is probably a relatively small overlap between them) are likely to just say "No, I don't own any" when asked.

There is a potential third case also: When a family member of the gun owner is polled about whether there is a gun in the home, and they don't know there is one present so they answer negative. That's probably more biased to the criminal side, though I suppose it's possible that someone who legally owns one might keep it locked away and out of sight of their spouse if the spouse is against guns.

I can't think of a reason for a corresponding upward bias to the numbers (ie., people falsely reporting that they do own guns when they actually don't).

That's why I think the surveys of who owns a gun consistently report a number lower than the actual, true number.

Fubini:My point is that if we want a truly accurate picture of gun use in this country we want the data and the tools to fully encapsulate all of these different situations and understand them, rather than just looking at how many people were sent to the hospital/morgue each year, which is what crime stats and mandatory reporting laws give us.

We want to understand how guns affect society, not just how many people they shoot.

I agree with you that research should understand the affect of guns on society and that involves many different behaviors and actions. It is certainly not incorrect to collect information on incidents like the one proposed in the article. However, I disagree that you should define the incident described as defensive gun use as apparently some have. Call it 'possession of a gun with intent to use' or something else, but not defensive gun use. If I were reviewing an article which used that definition of 'use,' I would question the authors intent and hope they would be very careful about the conclusions drawn from such a study. Alas, this consideration all goes out the window when a study reaches the media and/or special interest groups. Better to just have a standard, logical definition of 'use.'

Citrate1007:Is it logical to look at the .001% of people who use guns inappropriately and paint every gun owner as irresponsible or to look at the 99.999% that do. Obviously I'm pulling the numbers out of my ass but you see the point.

dittybopper:mrshowrules: The idea that more guns would cause more shootings is just logical. More bear traps would cause more bear trap accidents. This is the default position/assumption. In my mind, it is up to the gun nuts to show that it makes society safer, which obviously they can't do.

Now imagine that you are a researcher. You've already got a built-in bias before you even start designing your study. How do you think that might effect the outcome?

Everyone has an initial bias. That is human nature. A good researcher, is frequently surprised by the findings.

Can anyone show me a study done by the CDC before the evil republicans cut their funding where you can break gun violence down by gun violence done by people with prior convictions and gun violence done by upstanding citizens with 0 priors? One group is prohibited from owning firearms....the only group any new laws will affect would be the group of upstanding citizens with 0 priors.

In yesterdays senate hearing testimony the chief of police from milwaukee claimed over 90% of gun homicides were committed by career criminals and that over 80% of their victims were also career criminals.

The AG(?) Walsh from CO testified that the rifles Feinstein wants to ban account for less than 2% of all gun crume....both the Chief and AG were witnesses for the gun control side.

Earpj:My biggest problem with guns, is that I can go out and buy one. I have never even touched a gun.I don't think we need bans. I do think licensing would be good. In the same vein as driving a car.Have to prove you can handle a car. You should have to prove you can handle a gun.Maybe that would cut down the numbers of kids getting ahold of them.

The NRA is already going to oppose you in the next Republican primary, run a gun nut, dump millions into local tv and radio saturation ads, and probably win.

Thats really a big part of the issue. We can't have normal legislation for common sense response to unregulated gun ownership because, any time we suggest it, the NRA is out in force shooting at everything that moves. They're the LA cops of public policy. And we're all grandmas in pickup trucks.

I don't think the article is saying that nothing can be derived from current data (which is what a lot of you seem to be getting out of it).

It's saying that if we're really concerned about this, then national, fully-funded real studies with controls and shiat by neutral third parties would do a lot more good than the current cobbling-together of a dozen different data sources that we've got. Which is true enough. While there is current data that does say things, it's mostly about crime rates and so on in general and not the actual role of guns, or drugs.

We're probably never going to get what TFA wants, though, because of the DEA and the NRA, who are unreasonable well past the end-point of sanity.

Giltric:Can anyone show me a study done by the CDC before the evil republicans cut their funding where you can break gun violence down by gun violence done by people with prior convictions and gun violence done by upstanding citizens with 0 priors? One group is prohibited from owning firearms....the only group any new laws will affect would be the group of upstanding citizens with 0 priors.

In yesterdays senate hearing testimony the chief of police from milwaukee claimed over 90% of gun homicides were committed by career criminals and that over 80% of their victims were also career criminals.

The AG(?) Walsh from CO testified that the rifles Feinstein wants to ban account for less than 2% of all gun crume....both the Chief and AG were witnesses for the gun control side.

You'd also have to recognize that they indicated the guns used in crime were overwhelmingly supplied through theft and straw sales. In both cases, the guns originate from a legal ownership transfer to illegal ownership. When someone makes a purchase with the intent of delivering that weapon to a prohibited person, that purchaser would have to go through a background check and pass.

FTF sales without background checks accounted for a very small percentage of guns used in crime (I think that implies where the gun used was recovered, though).

So what you have is two major supply avenues for criminal use. If you only wanted to address access, then you'd need some pretty draconian laws like registration and outright bans--the things that likely will never happen. Anything short of that won't do the job.

I think that no honest debate about gun violence should be centered on the tools chosen and access but should focus on cause. Why are people shooting each other? While I think it is fallacious to say that if you take away guns, they'll just cave in skulls with hammers, the fact remains that the estimates show there are around 300 million guns out there. Those guns aren't going to disappear if we wish them away.